DeConick A.D

88
SUPERPOWERS AND MONSTERS
The Hermetics have left us with a large number of documents that
outline their beliefs, and all of them point to the religious buffer where
Egyptian lore about Atum mingles with Greek philosophical sensibilities.
The Egyptian gurus who composed the documents did so at a moment
in Egyptian history when their land had been colonized by the Greeks
and then by the Romans. They felt that their ancestors had been faithful
to the Egyptian gods, had been pious and reverent, but that it had not
paid off. What good had come of all their sacrifices to the gods? What was
the consequence of their reverence? Foreigners were occupying the land.
The temples had been abandoned. The holy land of Egypt had become a
land filled with tombs and corpses. Irreverence, disorder, and evil were all
around them. Old Egypt had died (Asclepius 24, 26 [Latin]).
We might have expected these Egyptian priests to blame the foreigners
for the destruction of the old Egypt. But they did not. Instead of blaming
the foreigners for the disorder and chaos around them, they blamed their
ancestors instead. They thought their ancestors had erred gravely when it
came to understanding divinity. Although their ancestors had been attentive
to the worship of the gods, they had been inattentive to the worship
of God, the all-lord. Instead of focusing their reverence on the Unbegotten,
the One and All, Atum, their ancestors had focused on the begotten
gods, a second tier of deities who had been generated to govern the land
(37 [Latin]).
What had their ancestors done? They had made cult statues, which
they successfully implanted with the souls of various gods through magic.
Because these cult gods had been formed by mixing the souls of the gods
with precious metals and stones, the cult gods had earthly natures as well
as heavenly. The cult gods needed to be appeased and entertained by constant
sacrifices, hymning, and praises, so that the heavenly entity could be
enticed to stay within the earthly statue and assist humankind. Although
the divine entities in the cult statues could be manipulated to do good,
they also could become annoyed and inflict punishment. In fact, this is
just what happened. When different local populations treated various cult
statues differently, honoring some and not others, the gods became angry
and withdrew from the land (37–38).
The Hermetic gurus said that the only remedy is to worship the supreme
all-lord, who, unlike the begotten gods, is offended by sacrifices